Well hello there...

Yikes! It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to post here! Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with our day to day doings on Facebook and Twitter so you haven’t really missed anything. Today, I thought I’d write a blog post about a blog post – how very Meta of me.

Recently, the Sacramento Zoo mentioned us on their blog in an article about their male Snow leopard, Ramir. Ramir is going to be joining us here at Potter Park, which is really great news! We talk a lot about getting animals in and sending some of ours off to other zoos all of the time and as you can imagine, it’s a complicated process. For the Snow leopards, all of the zoos follow the lead of the Snow leopard Species Survival Plan (SSP for short). The SSP keeps records of all of the animals in captivity and helps zoos determine breeding plans for the longevity of the species. This is how Ramir was chosen to come to Potter Park. Our hope is that he’ll be a good match for our female Snow leopard, Serena.

In all, Potter Park Zoo currently participates in 19 SSP programs ranging from Amur tigers to Puerto Rican Crested toads. In fact, our Zoo Director is the SSP Coordinator for the Sumatran tiger program. There are more than 115 AZA SSP programs in total, which means a lot of constant collaboration between organizations all over the world.

We’re excited to be getting Ramir from Sacramento Zoo. I’m sure he’ll get a nice warm reception from our keepers, volunteers and visitors when he arrives. Keep in touch as the story unfolds!